Influential figures from the world of politics and the arts added their voices to the protests by Muslims worldwide over the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that were published in the European media as the holiest day for Shi’ites, Ashura, was observed in various countries.
Polish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa condemned the publication of a caricature of the prophet Muhammad by a top-shelf Polish national daily newspaper.
The legendary freedom fighter of the 1980s anti-communist Solidarity trade union criticized the ”disturbing activities of media in Poland, propagating texts impinging on the good principles of respect and value for religious convictions … which strike Muslims in a painful manner”.
Two Nobel Prize-winning authors blasted the media that published the caricatures as irresponsible or arrogant in interviews with the Spanish daily El Pais.
”It would not be a question of censoring oneself, but of using common sense,” said Portugal’s Jose Saramago, winner of the 1998 literature Nobel.
”This was a conscious and planned provocation by a right-wing Danish newspaper,” said German Guenter Grass, who took the Nobel Prize in 1999.
Grass described the Danish publishers of the caricatures as ”xenophobic right-wing radicals” and the subsequent violent Muslim protests as ”a fundamentalist response to a fundamentalist act”.
”Where does the West take that arrogance to impose what must and must not be done?” Grass asked, stressing the relativity of the freedom of opinion in the West where the media are controlled by conglomerates ”monopolising the public opinion”.
Others called for a redefinition of the freedom of expression that incorporates ”standardised” universally-accepted religious taboos, prominent Muslim scholars said.
”There are religious axioms which are enshrined in the well-established international norms and conventions, and the Western world does know they should be respected,” said Ibrahim Ezzedine, chairperson of Jordan’s state-run Higher Media Council.
The condemnation came as hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites and followers of the Hezbollah movement marched through the streets of Beirut’s southern suburbs in protest against the caricatures.
Several thousand South African Muslims staged a demonstration in the streets of Cape Town.
The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), the body that organised the march, handed to Danish Ambassador Torben Brylle a memorandum calling on the Danish government to apologise to Muslims around the world.
Protests were also planned for Hong Kong, the city’s 70 000-strong Muslim community has announced.
Meanwhile in Denmark, the newspaper at the centre of the ongoing row refuted reports that it planned to publish anti-Semitic or anti-Christian caricatures, the chief editor said on Thursday.
Jyllands-Posten‘s editor Carsten Juste’s statement was published on the newspaper’s website after a Danish television channel reported that publication was pending this Sunday.
Websites have in recent days been set up in Denmark and elsewhere offering people a chance to send an apology to Muslims offended by Jyllands-Posten‘s publication as one group of Arab and Muslim youths apologised for the violence that followed the caricatures.
The government continued efforts to defuse the crisis on Thursday.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was ”prepared to listen to all proposals”, a Rasmussen aide told Deutsche Presse-Agentur but was unable to meet on Thursday with a parliamentary deputy of Turkish origin to discuss an idea of Turkey mediating in the ongoing row over the controversial cartoons.
In a related development, Aarhus police said they would not pursue a complaint of blasphemy filed against Jyllands-Posten over the publication last September of the caricatures.
In Norway, the Muslim al-Jinah Foundation filed a police complaint against Vebjorn Selbekk, chief editor of Christian weekly Magazinet that recently reprinted the Muhammad caricatures.
In Iran, Vice-President Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee denied US accusations that his country was inflaming Muslim anger against the West over the caricatures.
”It’s a lie, 100% baseless,” Mashaee told reporters after meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Vice-President Yusuf Kalla, in Jakarta.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday accused Iran and Syria of stoking anti-Western sentiment among Muslims for their own purposes.
Attempts to publish the controversial caricatures in the Muslim world have met fierce opposition.
Malaysian Cabinet members demanded the immediate suspension of a major newspaper after it reprinted the caricatures.
The editor of the English-language Sarawak Tribune had resigned on Sunday after admitting to approving the publication of the caricatures.
Station directors, editors and journalists were suspended from their posts at two Algerian television stations because their news programmes showed the Muhammad caricatures.
A United States university professor in the United Arab Emirates was fired after distributing among her students a copy of the caricatures, saying her action was within the rights of ”freedom of opinion and expression”.
Protests in the Muslim world took a back seat as Shi’ites celebrated their holiest festival, Ashura, that commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, who they believe to be the prophet’s true successor.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi’ites marched in the holy city of Karbala in tribute to Hussein who was killed in battle there in the year 680.
Clashes between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims in the western Afghan city of Herat left at least four people dead, while violence also clouded Ashura commemorations in Pakistan, where at least 12 people were killed and 20 wounded when two bombs ripped through a procession of Shi’ite Muslims in the Hangu district of North-Western Frontier Province, 245 kilometres west of Islamabad.
Taliban say 100 enlist for suicide attacks
One hundred militants have enlisted to become suicide bombers in Afghanistan since the appearance of the ”blasphemous” cartoons, a top Taliban commander said on Thursday.
Mullah Dadullah, one of the Taliban’s most senior military commanders, said his Islamic extremist group had also offered a reward of 100kg of gold to anyone who killed people responsible for the drawings.
”More than 100 mujahedin have enlisted to carry out suicide attacks,” the fugitive Dadullah said by telephone from an unknown location.
The targets would be ”infidels”, said the commander, who is believed to be close to the Taliban’s wanted leader Mullah Omar.
He added: ”The Taliban will give 100kg of gold to one who kills the cartoonist.”
Five kilograms of gold would go to anyone who killed a soldier from Denmark, Germany or Norway — among the countries where the cartoons have appeared.
At current prices 100kg of gold is worth about $1,9-million.
Dadullah said that the Taliban militia, which has been waging an insurgency in Afghanistan for the past four years, had strong support from the al-Qaeda network and good ties with militants in Iraq.
”We do have relations with al-Qaeda. We’re one body. Al-Qaeda funds our fightings. We’re one body, brothers, and we’ve one common enemy,” he said.
”We’ve good relations with Iraqi mujahedin and al-Qaeda mujahedin,” he said, calling on other Muslims to join the fight against Western countries which he said had invaded the Islamic world.
The Taliban was in government between 1996 and 2001 before being ousted in an operation launched by the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks blamed on al-Qaeda.
Dadullah claimed the Taliban had defeated the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai on several fronts and was in control of several southern Afghanistan districts, which he did not name.
The militants have carried out regular attacks on foreign and pro-government targets, mainly in the south and east, despite the presence of nearly 30 000 foreign troops, two-thirds of them US-led forces tasked with hunting down militants.
Dadullah said some of the attackers involved in a spate of recent suicide blasts over recent months were foreigners but most of the insurgents were Afghans.
Violence blamed on the Taliban claimed more than 1 700 lives last year; nearly 100 people have died so far this year. – Sapa-AFP